Blogs from Springbok, Northern Cape, South Africa, Africa

The rest of my days in Cape Town were filled with visiting recommended spots for food and beverages as you saw in a few pics last post. Preparing is what I was up to. Preparing for the reason for my timeline of coming to Africa when I did…The Namaqualand Flower route is what I am looking forward to journeying on in search for vast fields of wildflowers. Whats this all about you ask? Well let me tell you…Imagine traveling down a road nothing curious about anything and then all of a sudden past one side of a mountain and in the valley is nothing but millions of beautifully glorious wild flowers blanketing the ground soaking up the South African sun. A myriad of colors adorns the bottom of what seems to be a picturesque painting that ... read more

Hi all, we are now at port nollith a campsite called Mac dougalls bay after a stop over at Springbok, what is it with these municaple parks, after staying in a private park it is realy a let down to come to one of these parks, thay generally have awsome parks but very run down, no maintenance and shabby ablutions, well enough moaning. Once again the gremlins were with us, after leaving Clan william all went well for 80 km. then buksie started over heating, it was a very hot day 30 + so we unhitched buksietjie and Wanda had to drive her and i drove buksie but to no avail, just kept on over heating, so we decided to stop over at Springbok to sort out the problem, unfortunatly there isnt much in the way ... read more

On the way to Namib After a wonderful two days with Anton, Petro and their 2 kids Tristan(2) and Zarna (4) (Sarahs Cousins) - in Langebaan staying in the ultimate beach house we are now on our way north. Langebaan was wind plus - up to 30 knots - I kited in perfect conditions and the kids and Sarah fell in love with the town and beach house... amazing - a kite destination that the kids love !!! Finally Nirvana has been found. We drove our 4WD last night deep into Cederberg National Park and had a great camp on a river, swam and slept under trees getting buffeted by wind gusts up to 40 knots. Not alot of sleep but an amazing setting Now 1 hours drive from the Namibian Border heading for Fish River ... read more

Well what a festival to remember. Proper boere style good old fashion vetpret. We spent the day at the fees from early morning Saturday right through to that time of night when you know you’ve had enough but you keep going until you’re so thankful that you don’t have to crawl much further than the parking lot to your truck to crash out. There were a few other campers scattered around but the other hundreds of people must have booked into the dozen or so guest houses or the Hotel or crawled into a hole somewhere. There were loads of stalletjies selling stuff from kweper jelly to spotted Nguni cowhides. They had animals on display from stud Merino sheep which nearly measured to under my armpits (I bet those peertjies weren’t for sale), miniature donkeys, beautiful ... read more

The 800k detour! (having trouble loading photos as internet connection is too slow - will try again later) Again a local gave us good advice but this time it was ‘go west now to see the spring wildflowers - the rain has come early.’ We debated this over 2 rest days, again in a nice cabin at Upington doing the washing, and decided to head into the setting sun. The 400km journey west to Springbox had a South American feel (not that we’ve been to S Am!!) with huge sweeping semi-arid plains between various oddly shaped piles of rock - well mountains actually of all sorts of shapes (I could just imagine a gaucho galloping across). (Strangely) my navigating skills were tested that afternoon as we had difficulty finding the Namaqualand National Park - a whole ... read more